Mission: Valentine
by giuli miadi black
Summary: Eric planned the ultimate Valentine's Day gift for his girlfriend - who likes zombies and guns just as much as he does. / Rated M for blood and gore. No smut.


**Warnings:** This is a zombie story. Blood and guts will be involved. Dogs will be killed (but they were dead to begin with, so it doesn't count, does it?).

 **A/N:** This story is set on my college campus, which is the most beautiful place during the day - and absofuckinglutely terrifying at night. All the places, from the double staircases leading to nowhere to the fucking _crater_ in the middle of a parking lot are 100% real.

I wrote this for Valentine's Day, and I'm only 20 days late in posting it!

* * *

 **Mission: Valentine**

 _8: Get a kickass partner_

 _Survival Rules - Zombieland_

* * *

Eric had spent the weeks leading up to Valentine's Day teasing her about his plans. He'd vanish for hours at a time, and when he came back, he'd tell her that he'd been working on _the one date to rule them all_ – an overly dramatic expression that he'd apparently picked up from that huge book he kept rereading.

She only hoped that his idea of "an amazing date" didn't involve hunting for Hobbies, or whatever those creatures were called.

He'd kicked her out of his apartment at ten, the night before, so they met at the cafeteria for breakfast. The usually grey – and slightly depressing – room was now covered in pink and white, and the whole menu could be described as "red velvet", "heart-shaped", or both. Watching him tear the bacon hearts on his plate to pieces, she found herself once again wondering if Eric even understood the concept of "romantic".

In the ten months since their first date, they'd never shared a single candlelight dinner, nor had she ever received any flowers or boxes of chocolates. He'd cooked her breakfast in bed exactly twice – once on her birthday, the second on their six-month anniversary -, and their movie nights usually involved zombies and murderous dinosaurs, instead of couples falling in love.

Not that she didn't feel loved; she knew from the start that, with Eric, grand gestures were few and far between, and that none of that had the same meaning to him as the countless nights they'd spent sitting in his living room, just enjoying each other's company.

Still, she knew that wasn't the most "Eric" of holidays, and she was really curious to see what he'd planned for their first Valentine's Day together.

hr

Eric led her through the Pit, telling her all about his latest literary acquisition as if that could possibly distract her from the fact that they were heading to the roof of the Pire. After being put through countless pop quizzes regarding the compound map, she knew exactly which rooms they could reach through that path – and she somehow doubted his _magnificent_ plans involved the boiler or the central supply storage.

"So, fear landscape, huh?" she asked, teasingly. "Is this your idea of a date?"

"Absolutely," he replied, his voice strangely devoid of sarcasm, as he unlocked the door to the observation room. "Can you get the syringes, please?" He tilted his head towards the cupboard in the corner before turning to the computer.

She frowned, watching him turn the computer on and click on an icon with his name on it.

" _Today_ , Charlotte," he said, impatiently, as the screen turned dark and endless lines of code started loading. She nodded, grabbing a pair of syringes from the cupboard and following him to the adjacent room.

He stopped right in the middle of the room, getting two vials out of his pocket. The serum in them had a pretty, pale pink colour she'd never seen before, and she couldn't help but wonder what kind of simulation it was supposed to trigger.

"Give me your arm," he demanded, filling the first syringe with the contents of one of the vials, and she quickly obliged. He grabbed her wrist and pressed his thumb against her inner elbow, looking for her vein. She smiled, remembering the first time he'd injected her with a fear simulation serum, telling her that he'd never understood why Dauntless had chosen the neck as the favoured injection site, when the arm was so much safer and less painful.

She suspected that the explanation lied in the exact same arguments, but she'd never been able to work up the courage to mention that to him.

"The simulation will start immediately. Don't do anything until I join you, okay?"

"Okay." She smiled, and he hummed in agreement, pressing the needle against her skin.

As the world started to fade, she expected him to tell her to "kick some ass", like he'd always done whenever he sent her off to a simulation. Instead, she faintly heard him say, "Make me proud."

The next thing she knew, Eric had vanished, and she was standing alone in the middle of the fear landscape room – although she had no idea how she could be so sure of her location when the room was so dark that she could barely see a foot ahead of her.

"Welcome, Charlie," a male voice said, coming from somewhere above her. "Please pick your weapons."

The entire room lit up at that, and she could see that the wall in front of her was covered in an impressive array of weapons, from wooden boomerangs to a bazooka. She took a step forward, not even knowing where to begin – the only thing that came to her mind was Eric telling her not to do anything until he joined her, and she was sure he'd be disappointed if she admitted that she didn't remember anything she'd learned about most of the weapons in front of her.

"Welcome, Eric," the voice said, and Charlie looked back, only to see her boyfriend walking towards her, while the voice repeated its previous instruction.

"Overwhelmed?" Eric asked, resting one hand on her shoulder. "I must admit, I had a lot of fun setting this part up."

She gave him a confused look, which he met with a knowing smile – and it was only then that she noticed that none of that felt truly real.

" _You_ created this simulation?"

"Every last line of coding." He shrugged, like he wasn't talking about something that most of the Erudite are barely able to accomplish. "I'd have added the reality suppression bit to the code, but I figured, why bother?" He winked at her, and she laughed, facing the wall again.

"So, what kind of firepower am I going for?"

His only reply was a flash of a proud smile, followed by reaching for a battle rifle and carefully placing it by his feet. They spent the next few minutes taking weapons off the wall, Charlie using Eric's rapidly-growing pile as a reference to make her own choices. Finally, he dropped a pair of knives on the floor and took a step back, assessing the contents of both inventories – his consisted of the battle rifle, a machete, a .45 pistol and a pair of knives, while she'd picked a sniper rifle, a shotgun, two pistols and a knife.

He was 100% sure he'd seen lists just like that in a divorce settlement or two.

"Now, that will be fucking useless," he declared, picking up the sniper rifle and putting it back on the wall. "Take this instead." He threw an assault rifle in her direction, rolling his eyes when she stared at the weapon in her hands like it was her mortal enemy – which, he supposed, it kind of was.

An assault rifle had been the first thing he'd taught her how to use, during leadership training, and he knew that she'd never been quite able to wrap her head around the fact that when you have an automatic, armour-piercing firearm in your hands, having perfect aim is far from necessary.

"Jarvis, we're ready," he announced to the room. His statement was met with silence, but a second later all the lights in the room had turned off, leaving them bathed in an eerie blue light that came from somewhere behind them.

She glanced sideways at Eric, who smiled, turning around to face a huge TV mounted on the wall. The screen displayed an octagon formed by white and red triangles, and Charlie felt a rush of excitement course through her body – she'd recognize that symbol anywhere.

Before she could say anything, the logo had disappeared, being replaced by a black background and the words "Umbrella Corporation – 1 of 6 – Orientation".

"My name is Alice," a female voice said, right before a dark-haired woman appeared on the screen, standing in front of a grey wall. "I worked for the Umbrella Corporation, the largest and most powerful commercial entity in the world." Charlie shrieked with excitement, clutching Eric's hand, barely hearing the woman's next words – not that she needed to, since she knew them by heart. "I was head of security at a secret high-tech facility, The Hive, a giant underground laboratory developing experimental viral weaponry. But there was an incident. The virus escaped and everybody died. Trouble was... they didn't stay dead."

The screen was flooded with images of the different types of zombies that appeared in the movies, from the humanoids to the ones that looked like genetic experiments gone wrong.

"Is this what I think this is?" Charlie asked, turning to face Eric, who did his best to keep his impassive expression. He'd spent _six weeks_ keeping his project a secret; he wasn't about to give it all away now.

"That depends on what you think this is."

Before she could reply, the screen turned dark, and the room went silent for a couple of seconds before Jarvis said, "Please choose your mission."

A menu showed up on the screen, displaying the words "The Ring", followed by four other lines that read, "[Locked]".

"Gee, I wonder what I'll choose," she said, and Eric laughed, reading the name of their "chosen" mission to the room.

"Objective: find the ring," Jarvis announced, as the words appeared on the screen, followed by a map full of bright red dots. "Secondary objectives: secure the tower and clean up the area." A drawer popped open below the TV, revealing two watches. "Please wear your navigation devices at all times."

Eric grabbed the watches, handing one over to Charlie before he clasped the other on his wrist. Mimicking his actions, she pressed the button on the side, and the tiny screen lit up, displaying the words "Slide to start".

"Ready?" he asked.

"Honey, I was _born_ ready."

He'd never admit it out loud, but the huge smile that seemed permanently imprinted on her face was already enough to make that whole thing worth the effort he'd put into it.

"Good luck, soldiers," Jarvis said, as they slid their fingers through the screens. "And remember: death of a team member means mission failure."

hr

They stood in the middle of a huge roundabout, facing a bronze statue of a person with deep set eyes and a line for a mouth, standing on the concrete pedestal with a regal posture and wearing a tunic that only showed their feet and hands. The trees all around them filtered the dim light from the street lamps, casting eerie shadows on the asphalt.

"Which way?" she asked, in a whisper. In the absolute silence that surrounded them, even that sounded too loud.

Eric checked his watch. The screen now displayed a map of their surroundings, with an arrow pointing at the street ahead of them. Above it, a minuscule header read, "Threat level: 5350".

The street seemed to house nothing more than a few decaying buildings, empty parking lots, and broken chain link fences. At the end of the block, they came to a stop at another roundabout, slightly smaller than the first one.

The street went on ahead of them, a steep climb with rows of trees on both sides. The street to their right was so poorly lit that all they could see was an artificial lake and a triangle-shaped sculpture.

"That way," Eric said, checking the map on his watch and pointing at the street ahead. They'd barely started walking towards it when both their watches beeped, and before they were even able to check out what was happening, they heard a growl, followed by quickly approaching steps.

The dog leapt out of the shadows, throwing Charlie to the ground. She struggled to push it away from her, using her rifle as leverage to keep its rotting mouth away from her face – not that it helped at all against the putrid smell that emanated from it or the saliva dripping from the corner of its mouth.

She felt like they'd been struggling for _hours_ when she heard two gunshots, and the dog fell limp against her gun. She pushed it away and got back on her feet, ignoring the warm, sticky blood that started trickling down her neck.

"Thanks," she said, grabbing her rifle off the floor. Eric rubbed his sleeve against her cheek, cleaning up the large drops of saliva that had fallen before he'd killed the dog.

"This seems like a convenient time to mention that I've added a self-healing feature to the simulation." He smiled at her. "You won't regrow any limbs or come back from the dead, but you won't die within the first ten minutes, either."

She laughed, touching the back of her head. It was still sore – which was perfectly understandable, given that she'd fallen on asphalt less than five minutes earlier – but it didn't feel like it was bleeding any more.

"That must be the best idea you've _ever_ had."

hr

They stopped at the top of the hill, leaning against a concrete sculpture shaped like two sphere quarters partially buried in the ground. The climb had been harder than they'd anticipated, likely because of the weight of the weapons they were carrying, and they both needed a few seconds to catch their breaths – although Eric would _never_ admit it, of course.

He fidgeted with his watch, zooming the map in and out and moving it back and forth between their location pin and the end of the next block. The header now displayed a threat level of 5335, and he could see a cluster of red dots in their immediate surroundings.

They exchanged a quick glance and she nodded – an unspoken "I'm ready if you are". Weapons ready to shoot at any moment, they walked around yet another roundabout, ignoring the street to their right and heading straight ahead.

They'd just walked past a small parking lot in front of a building when their watches beeped, a bunch of red dots blinking on the screen.

"Are they _in there_?"

"Probably." He shrugged. "In theory, we can get in any building we want, so they could be _anywhere_."

She nodded, slowly, and started walking towards the building. The red spiral staircases that flanked the entrance seemed to be empty, so she just walked past them, only stopping when she was standing in front of the glass door.

The interior lit up the second Eric stopped next to her, allowing them to see a huge lobby with a massive ramp right in the middle of it. Two zombies were slowly making their way towards the second floor, where Charlie could see what looked like at least another dozen zombies.

"So, what's your plan?" he asked, earning a surprised look from her. Eric wasn't the type of person who'd simply step down in a situation like that, and he didn't look like he was just testing her, either.

She bit her lower lip, weighing her possibilities. An all-out assault was clearly the simplest strategy, but as Eric had taught her, Occam's razor doesn't always work in a war – as far as they knew, a bunch of other zombies could be hiding on the ground floor, ready to close in on them and bring their mission to a premature end.

"Can we lure them out?"

He hesitated, trying to decide how much he wanted her to find out the answer on her own – then again, it was so predictable that he didn't see the harm in sharing it with her _before_ they were holding on for dear life.

"They follow sounds. Footsteps, gunshots, yelling. _Beeps_ , apparently." He chuckled. "The real question is, and then what? Bringing the problem outside won't make it go away."

She nodded and stepped back, looking around in an attempt to – quite literally – see the bigger picture. Their eyes met, and she just tilted her head towards one of the spiral staircases, eliciting a proud smile from him.

"I say we rain down on them like the Holy Ghost."

"That," he said, wrapping his free arm around her waist, "was the hottest thing you've ever said to me."

"Easy there, psycho." She laughed. "Cover me, will you?"

He hesitated for a second, likely trying to come up with an answer that wasn't an innuendo. Finally, he asked, "What do you have in mind?"

"I'll bring them outside, while you wait at the top of those stairs and look pretty. How does that sound?"

"Sounds like the kind of job I was born for."

"Glad you agree." She smiled at him. "Now go to your tower, Princess. It's show time."

He kissed her temple, whispering, "Good luck, Sharkbait," before sauntering away. She watched him climb up the first couple of steps before she walked up to the doors again, taking a deep breath before she opened the door.

The creaking of the hinges was enough to catch the attention of all the zombies nearby – she knew that, because she saw them freeze, slowly turning their heads towards the source of the sound. Still, she brought her gun over to her shoulder, making sure she'd set it up to fire single shots before she aimed at the head closest to herself and pulled the trigger.

The sound of the body hitting the floor was almost drowned by a collective groan, and the zombies started moving towards her, while she walked backwards to the exit.

Once outside, she ran up the second staircase, hearing Eric open fire before she'd even reached the top. Switching from single shots to full automatic, she rested the gun on the handrail, aiming at the zombies trying to get past the door, and pulled the trigger.

The combined sounds of their guns was deafening, drowning out whatever sounds the zombies could be making – and she was sure there were plenty of those. Blood sputtered everywhere, and pieces of brains and other unidentified organs flew in all directions, sticking to flesh and concrete alike.

The one second when Charlie lost control of her weapon resulted in a rain of glass shards, but their enemies simply kept walking as though they didn't have glass embedded on their flesh, trampling each other on their attempts to reach the stairs.

The assault ended as abruptly as it had begun, when nothing else moved on the ground. Charlie and Eric exchanged a glance, and he switched his battle rifle for the machete before he came down the stairs to check for any survivors.

"All clear!" he shouted, and Charlie rushed to join him. "Good job, Sharkbait." He smiled, checking his watch to see that the threat level had gone down by 200 with that single attack. "Only five hundred more zombies and we're out of here."

"It's gonna be a walk in the park, then."

He nodded, wrapping his arm around her waist as they started walking back to the street. For the next minute or so, there were only trees around them, and the only street they walked past was so poorly illuminated that they'd probably have refused to walk into it even if the simulation had forced them to.

Finally, they reached a two-storey building sitting atop a hill, and both watches beeped, in a tone that sounded slightly different than the zombie alert beep. Eric froze, staring at his watch with an utterly confused expression.

"But _how_?" he murmured to himself, playing around with the map again.

"What? What's going on?"

"We're at a bifurcation," he explained. "If you look at your map, you'll see that all streets in this place connect to each other in one way or another, so the simulation always picks a random point to make us walk in a circle, instead of making us retrace our steps on our way back. I thought it felt more logical this way." He shrugged. "The thing is, I'm not sure _how_ we're supposed to make a full circle if we follow this path. I've never been there, and there are too many red dots at the end, look." He turned his wrist to her, so she could see his screen. "I can't see if this leads to a dead end."

"So you're saying, we're facing the unknown, and killing zombies while we're at it?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"And all those losers saying that zip lining is the most fun a girl can have without taking her pants off." She dramatically rolled her eyes. "Let's do this!"

They climbed up the stairs, finding a row of buildings that extended for as far as they could see. A sign near the door of the building at their right read "13B", and as they walked down the corridor, the numbers on the other buildings caught his attention.

13A. 13. 14, 15. He started to wonder where 1-12 were. 16, 17, 18. A large gate, guarding a massive, unnumbered building. 19. He was officially determined to create an exploration mission as soon as he found the time to do it. 20, 21, 22.

The corridor went on after 22, ending in a railing that overlooked a cliff. To their left, narrow stairs led to the ground, where a bunch of zombies walked around, some of them carrying pipes or tree branches.

"That sniper rifle would have been super convenient now, don't you think?" she teased, leaning against the railing. To make matters worse, she could see two dogs amongst the horde of zombies. A single mistake could get them both killed, and while holding the watch point certainly helped a lot, their current condition was far from favourable.

" _Grenades_ would have been super convenient now." He lodged the barrel of his rifle on the railing, aiming at the ground below. "You take the grey dog, I take the yellow. We can kill them both if we fire at the same time. What do you say?"

"Sounds like the only way out."

"Glad we have an agreement."

She chuckled, getting her gun ready to fire. "On three?"

His reply was the soft click that indicated that his safety was off. "One," he called. On two, they both took a deep breath, pulling the trigger as they exhaled.

Both dogs fell limp on the floor, and the zombies started moving towards the stairs. Eric motioned for her to move closer to the stairs, so she could guard the access point while he took care of the zombies in the back – a strategy they'd used countless times in her training simulations, after he'd realised that they worked best when they were cleaning up after each other.

Killing all the zombies on the ground was almost as easy as that other building had been, especially after they were all gathered under the light from the street lamps that lined the staircase. Charlie had even switched the assault rifle for her two pistols, after deciding that having some fun and showing off wouldn't hurt them.

Just as she was firing her last shot at that _one_ zombie that had made it into the second step of the stairs, Eric felt something hitting his shoulder, and he turned around to see another horde of zombies approaching them from behind, some of them close enough that they could almost touch him.

"Charlie!" he called out, desperately firing at anything that moved in front of him. She ran in his direction, not even bothering to switch weapons before she started shooting.

Hands grabbed her wrists, nails digging into her skin, the grunts and groans nearly drowning out the sound of their guns. She heard Eric curse at her side, and he stopped firing, hitting the zombie that had grabbed her with the barrel of his rifle, shooting it on the head before it had even hit the ground.

"Cover me," he ordered, throwing his weapon at her and unsheathing the machete. A new wave of zombies was only a few feet away, far enough that she could keep most of them at bay before they'd reached the bodies from the previous horde – and the ones that did get past her lost limb upon limb to Eric's merciless strikes.

They got a couple of seconds to breathe before the third wave got too close, which Eric used to get his gun back, while Charlie grabbed her own rifle. They both leaned against the railings, to make sure nothing would attack them from behind, and opened fire again.

Eric counted twelve waves – one for each building they'd walked past. By the end of it, the pile of corpses between them and the corridor had become so tall that the zombies had to climb it to get to the other side, and they'd gone back to using pistols and the machete, occasionally having to drop to the ground to avoid getting hit by the pipes and tree branches that some of the zombies threw at them.

The final test had been another pair of dogs, which leapt over the pile while they were too busy holding the zombies back. Eric had killed one of them with minimal effort, but the second bit Charlie's leg before he got to it. She kicked and screamed, repeatedly hitting it with her weapon, to no avail; it didn't let go, even after Eric had slit its throat, and she had to step away from the fight to pry its jaw open and free herself, firing a couple of bullets into its head for good measure.

"Are you okay?" he asked, holstering all of his weapons and sitting on the floor next to her, while she cut off a part of her pants so she could assess the damage to her leg.

"This looks ugly." She gingerly touched the tender skin around the wounds. "Are you sure it'll heal?"

"It may be a while," he admitted.

Before he could say anything, their watches beeped, the screen displaying the message "Objective complete: secure the tower". The threat level had dropped by over 2500 points, reaching 2485.

"The good news is that we're more than halfway done." He smiled at her. "There'll be a big group of zombies guarding the ring, but it won't be as bad as this one."

"Good," she replied, faintly. "Really good."

He looked at her, trying to be as objective as possible about her current situation. She was badly injured and bleeding _a lot_ , to the point where he was starting to wonder if he'd need to intervene.

"Can you walk?"

"I don't think so."

"Can you shoot?"

She laughed – a sound that was too welcome, given the circumstances. "Am I dead?"

He kissed her temple and got up. "The simulation considered this sector clear, so there shouldn't be any more zombies lurking nearby, but I advise you to stay alert just in case. I'll go look for some water."

She nodded, grabbing her shotgun – a decision he definitely approved of, considering that he doubted she'd be able to handle an assault rifle at that moment.

She looked much better when he came back, after breaking into what looked like a laboratory to look for something he could use as a glass. If anything, some colour had returned to her face, and the wound on her leg didn't seem to be bleeding any more. Still, they sat there for a few more minutes, until she announced that she thought she was able to walk again.

He helped her walk down the stairs, stepping over the corpses on the ground and offering her his hand to help her do the same, while she talked about how utterly gross it was that they were walking over rotting blood and guts.

That street looked like all others, except for the fact that it was much narrower than those. They'd been walking for five minutes, Charlie's leg slowly getting better, when they reached a parking lot with a huge crater in the middle of it. The building behind it had a sun painted on it, along with the words "All hail the glow cloud". A small cluster of zombies walked around the entrance, and Eric smiled, nudging Charlie with his shoulder.

"You think we can make them fall in there?" he asked, cocking his head in the crater's direction.

She smiled back at him, looking every bit as manic as he did. "I knew there was a reason why I loved you."

They slowly made their way towards the building, trying to make as little noise as possible. When they were both satisfied with the distance, Claire grabbed a pebble from the ground and threw it, as hard as she could, towards the building, shouting, "Over here, asshats!"

The zombies started moving, Eric and Charlie only bothering to shoot those that weren't walking towards the crater. This group was _at least_ as big as the one back at the first building, but after the massive attack they'd just been through, this almost felt like one of those shoot-to-win games from the Valentine's Day Fair that Dauntless organized every year at the Pit.

Eric then stepped back, allowing her to have some fun with the zombies on her own – this was _her_ gift, after all. Her shots were stunningly precise, hitting heads, hearts, kneecaps, covering the asphalt in the absolutely disgusting mix of blood and bone and flesh.

After she'd blown the head off the last zombie, their watches beeped again, the yellow arrow pointing at the bus stop across the parking lot. From there, the map made them walk up a street that ran parallel to the one they'd just come from – which, along with the threat level of 2250, was a sign that they were almost done with their mission.

"Do you think this place would look any less creepy in broad daylight?" she asked, after they'd been walking for a while. This street looked like it cut through a forest, the trees much larger and denser than anywhere else they'd been, and the lampposts were few and far between, which only added to the eerie feeling that their surroundings evoked.

"I think some of it would be really beautiful by day, actually."

"Not this street, though."

He laughed. "No, not this street."

They kept walking until they reached a fork, and their watches told them to follow the path that led to a parking lot. Charlie started walking towards it, but Eric grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop.

"Hold on, let me show you something." He turned his wrist to her. "This yellow dot right there is the ring. You see the amount of zombies around it?" He moved his finger in a circle around the screen, showing her the huge cluster of red dots just pixels away from their location pins. "I bet all the remaining zombies are here, so I'd say we're looking at something _almost_ as bad as those stairs."

She looked at her surroundings again, this time trying to see it from a strategic point of view. The parking lot led to the basement of a building, and the ground floor was connected to the street by a bridge that seemed to start at least 200 feet away from where they were.

"We're fucked up, aren't we?" she asked.

"Beyond all reason."

She looked at him, her expression lighting up, like it did every time she was given a particularly difficult challenge. He'd probably get in a lot of trouble for admitting it, but he'd made her training much harder than it should have been, just so he could see that look in her face more often.

"Bring it on."

They entered the building, finding themselves in a long corridor with zombies walking back and forth across it. Silently thanking the heavens because there weren't any dogs in sight, Eric shot a zombie in the head, while Charlie hit both kneecaps of a second. When he spared a second to frown at her, she just shrugged, shooting another zombie on the legs before she said, "They'll never reach us if they don't have working legs."

Eric looked at the zombies she'd hit, which were now crawling towards them. It seemed to be quite effective, if their goal was just to reduce each zombie's individual threat, but he wondered if it was worth the effort involved in aiming for the knee – twice. For that reason, he kept going for the head shots, letting her have as much sadistic fun as she'd like while he cleaned up the corridor.

When they were done, they walked down the corridor, trying all the doors until they reached the one at the end – the only one that was unlocked. The room looked like an amphitheatre with rows of school desks, and the huge blackboard at the front had the words "The cake is a lie" written on it.

"I'll go look for the ring," Eric said, walking further into the room. "You guard the door."

She nodded, looking out for any signs of incoming zombies. She heard the first grunts right before her watch beeped, and she barely glanced at the message on the screen – "Objective complete: find the ring" – before she started shooting the first zombies that came around the corner.

Eric was standing by her side shortly after, which wasn't enough to make her feel any less uneasy about the fact that they had nowhere to run from where they stood – locking themselves into the room would be ineffective and counterproductive, but they couldn't leave the building without getting past the zombies, either. To make matters worse, the zombies just kept coming without any breaks, not giving them any time to breathe or switch weapons.

And, of course, the 200 or so zombies they still had left included at least a dozen dogs.

Charlie made it her personal mission to kill them all in as few shots as possible, while Eric took care of the slower zombies. In exchange, she handled the "adult" zombies when the little girls with long black hair came, allowing Eric to target them like his life depended on it.

Eventually, the floor was covered in body parts, the walls coated in blood and equally gross things that Charlie would rather not identify, and no other zombies were coming around the corner. They'd just had the time to let out a relieved sigh when their watches beeped, displaying the message "Objective complete: clean up the area".

"What now?" she asked, looking at him. Before he could reply, her watch beeped again, a new message popping up on the screen.

"New objective: say yes."

She looked at him again, frowning, and he dragged her back into the classroom, stopping in front of the blackboard, which now read, "It's dangerous to go alone. Take this."

"Charlie," he said, taking the ring out of his pocket. She recognized it as the ring from his favourite book – a golden band with beautifully weird engravings all around it. "Would you face the unknown and kill zombies with me for the rest of your life?"


End file.
